Notes on a transformation... or how one confused little girl ended up with far too many degrees in the search for where she belongs

Aug 25, 2013

You didn't think I'd just abandon you, did you?

Here we are. Well, I say "we," but it could just be me, really. Because after all this time, is there any reason you would still be here?

I do have a good reason for not having written since 2012. Or a continuous series of passable reasons, at least.

First, for a long time I didn't write because I was so very lost that, besides "I am so very lost," I could think of nothing at all to write about (and let's face it, we have a bit of a dead horse flogged there). Then I convinced myself I had (finally) gotten to that point where being a screw-up stops being cute, and everyone wishes you would just keep your existential angst to yourself like proper grown-ups do. I thought maybe I should try to be taken seriously (by anyone who isn't me), and that this might require a dialing down of the online exhibitionism. Which then led me to worry - in today's post-Snowden dystopia (and yes, I'm being ironic) - that I might have whored out my anonymity in exchange for cheap digital thrills and really, I was worth more than that.

And then I got some really lovely comments from readers and thought, screw it, I'm coming back.

Now, at this point, there was going to be a wonderfully uplifting video you could click on to get a subtle indication of what I will be up to starting tomorrow, something to get us all happy again and in the kind of coolly sarcastic but secretly hopeful mood that you have come to expect from yours truly. But sadly the gods of people who make videos were not on my side.